ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST TO SPEAK AT VANCOUVER & SURREY FORUMS

Responding to the constant drumbeat of threats against Iran by Donald Trump and his key foreign policy advisors, the Vancouver Peace Council warns that U.S. imperialism’s plans for new sanctions and military aggression pose an enormous danger to the peoples of the Middle East, and in fact to the entire world.

“In his recent tweets,” says a VPC statement, “Trump yet again threatened to bomb Iran out of existence, and then announced that the latest round of sanctions has begun, aiming to impose hunger and poverty on the people of Iran with the goal of forcing outside-imposed regime change.

“Such U.S.-led regime change strategies have caused catastrophic human and economic damage over the past several decades, in countries from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. The U.S. and its allies are guilty of war crimes on a vast scale, and a full military aggression against Iran would be the greatest such crime in history. Far from supposedly “liberating” Iranians, this is actually a very real threat to commit genocide against a country of over 80 million people, the opposite of allowing them to exercise their sovereign right to determine their own future.”

The Vancouver Peace Council, which was formed last spring, is urging all peace-loving people and organizations to speak out against the sharpening U.S. threats against Iran. The group calls on the Canadian government to “stop backing U.S. imperialist policies around the globe, and instead to reject the escalation of sanctions and the dangerous threat to launch a new and deadly war of aggression.”

On Sept. 14-15, the Vancouver Peace Council and the Fraser Valley Peace Council, member groups of the Canadian Peace Congress, will co-sponsor a speaking tour by U.S. human rights lawyer and anti-war activist Dan Kovalik, the author of “The Plot To Attack Iran.”

Presenting an overview of US imperial conduct since World War II, this book is a timely reminder of the outrageous hypocrisy and deceit of the U.S. government and the corporate media. Kovalik argues that Washington’s foreign policy operations have a devastating impact on other countries, and threaten the basic safety of people in the US itself.

At a time when the corporate media and political circles in the U.S. are consumed in debate over “outside election meddling,” Kovalik details how the US has continuously sought to overthrow the Iranian government since the 1979 revolution. His book reviews the US-British coup against Iranian democracy in 1953 which installed the brutal Shah, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, the background to Iran-Contra, the US playing both sides against each other during Iraq’s war on Iran, US relations with the Taliban, and the US-Saudi war on Yemen.

Kovalik will speak on Friday, Sept. 14, 7:30 pm, at the Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House (800 E. Broadway, Vancouver), and on Sat., Sept. 15, 2:00 pm, at the Strawberry Hill Public Library in Surrey.